By Gaia Martini
“Being able to go home is a privilege. Being able to go home after a tiring work day and have a shower is a privilege”. This is how the author and journalist Sami Al-Ajrami opened his lecture at Leiden University on March 3rd, where he presented his book De Sleutels van het Huis (The Keys to the House). The book, written with the help of Anna Lombardi, a journalist for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, was recently translated into Dutch (currently the book has only been published in Italian and Dutch).
In the book, Al-Ajrami recounts the events that he had to face in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and April 2024, before eventually managing to escape to Egypt. During the presentation, he explained that the idea for the book mainly came to his mind after documenting the ongoing genocide as daily reports for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. He recalled how, as soon as he and his family were displaced, he knew immediately that he wasn’t going to see his house ever again. Al-Ajrami stressed the importance of being able to go home after a long day, underlining that it is a privilege that many Palestinians do not have anymore. He shared how his grandparents held onto the keys to their house, hoping one day to be able to get back there, only to end up with the keys to a building that no longer existed. And this has been the fate of many Palestinians for the past 75 years.
Al-Ajrami also described the immense challenges he faced in continuing his work. Just two weeks after October 7th, he lost the ability to charge his computer and connect to the Internet since the IDF (the Israel Defence Force) destroyed all the antennas. From then on, he relied on his phone to publish articles – a task that wasn’t always easy. He had to walk for hours and then it would take him at least three hours to be able to send an article. He suffered from poverty and starvation, admitting that he often considered stopping with his reports.
When asked about what made him continue, he replied: “What motivated me was the Italian audience – the Italian people who, for the first time in my life as a journalist, accompanied me. To see that people were interested and that they bothered to search for my contact and talk to me all the time. This is the first time in my life that people who received my messages were so connected, so curious and willing to get to know more”.
He admitted that it was the first time in his entire career that he felt connected to his readers. “They sent me a lot of emails and messages saying ’if we don’t see your article the next morning in the newspaper then we know that something has happened to you.’”
For Al-Ajrami, writing this book was a healing process – a way for him to narrate the daily life of people in Gaza. The book has a simple style: a diary, documenting his days until his escape to Egypt. He doesn’t talk about epic heroes or soldiers fighting against each other, but he tells the story of ordinary people living under blockade with their daily struggles, while also finding joyful moments to distract themselves from what is happening. He rejoices in the feeling of solidarity that was created among the population and the strength of the people he met.
BAISmag 